Fallen millionaire winemaker David James has a lot in common with City Tatts.

You see Mr James has fallen on difficult times after his estranged wife put him through the cleaners. While Mrs James has been getting a fair whack through the family courts it appears that there is a problem with their declared joint assets. The funny thing is that Mr James managed to have an entire wine collection vanish, and this wine collection is estimated to be worth $5 million.

Now how funny is that!

Hard to believe, but the exact same thing happened at City Tatts. The club even had a purpose built wine store installed, complete with thermostat control to store the wine safely at the correct temperature.

Now where did this wine go? The wine went missing from the club, with no trace of it ever found. Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of wine.

Now we can report that Tony Guilfoyle slowly removed the wine from the City Tatts to an offsite facility called Wine Ark located somewhere near Balmain. This is not a big shock because Guilfoyle was the greatest thief in the club’s history. He stole anything that wasn’t nailed down.

But what is more of a shock is that nothing was ever done about the missing wine. Nothing was ever reported by Humpty Dumpty, the club’s financial controller. Now you would think that the financial controller would want to know where thousands of dollars of missing wine went, wouldn’t you? Well, not at City Tatts. Does this make the financial controller complicit in this theft? You bet it does.

In reality Humpty Dumpty should have made a song and dance about where the wine had gone. He should have brought it to the attention of the committee and the investigation should have started from there. But there is a twist to this tale. At the time John Kennedy (BSF) was chairman, and a very close relation of his owned a bottle shop. We have evidence that the wine was farmed out to this bottle shop and sold.

Now if Mark Cooper as financial controller didn’t know that this wine was missing, he is at best devoid of any ability, which is a real possibility. But if he did know, why didn’t he do something about it? If the latter, let us remind Mr Cooper that he has concealed an indictable offence. Which is itself an offence.

According to their website, Southern Cross Group are a global provider of facility, training and technology solutions ….. with a focus on innovation and people their strategic management model has seen the company’s portfolio grow to deliver services on a global platform ….. with clients across the entire range of industry types in both the public and private sectors …

Whew!

Are you more confused than when you started? We are!

You have to worry when the words global, strategic, innovation etc. are used in a company’s blurb. We say that based on our experience with such words.

Remember Tony Guilfoyle, and the crap that used to flow out of him?

He loved the word “strategic”. He obviously had no idea what it meant because everything he did was “strategic” yet he almost sent the club broke. Remember his strategic plan? Remember that nonsense? Every time he got the chance he tried to mention it. But look at the results. Absolute disaster. And what did the committee do? Nothing, but that’s a story for another time.

Now, let’s consider the word “global”. Southern Cross Group love this. They use it twice in the opening paragraph of their blurb. What are they trying to convince everyone of? From our perspective they run a security firm and a cleaning firm. What’s global about that?

How about “innovation’? We saw how much “innovation” they could add to security guards – backwards innovation!

See what we mean? Don’t worry, the Southern Cross Group are now under the spotlight and the City Tatts Information Desk will take great delight in highlighting their dealings with City Tatts, the good, the bad and the devious – or as they would probably say, the strategic, the global and the innovative.

Oh, one more thing. Maybe Southern Cross Group would like to add the following words to their blurb: Moving forward, adding value, creative outcomes, delivering deliverables, actionable outcomes, gaining traction, thinking outside the box and … cross polination. Remember Guilfoyle using all this rubbish? We do. So over to you Southern Cross Group to continue the Guilfoyle/Campion tradition of management by slogan. It shouldn’t be too hard given the committee are right behind the charade.

Remember Michael Mai, the shifty developer with the bogus University of Melbourne degree (See story in The Australian: Chinese tycoon’s son claims bogus Melbourne degree) that the Land and Environment court saw through? Well here is something you may find interesting.

City Tatts staff have been issued with lovely spray jackets emblazoned with the City Tatts logo. Nothing strange about that, you say.

What is strange is that the same spray jackets also display the logos of Southern Cross Group and Mai’s company, known in the property trade as AC/DC.

This clearly demonstrates that City Tatts, “AC/DC” and Southern Cross Group have a very warm and cosy working relationship. It also highlights that the Southern Cross-City Tatts arm of the business arrangement has been a work in progress for some time.

It didn’t with us and we are sure it doesn’t with you either. But it does with Marcelo Veloz.

Well placed sources at Dooleys Catholic Club have contacted the City Tatts Information Desk to advise of this little family connection you may find interesting.

Back in 2012 Marshmallow Veloz was General Manager at Dooleys. At the time there was a Colin Eisenhuth employed at Dooleys. This chap Colin was a maintenance manager. Not long after, Veloz was given the royal order of the boot for over-inflating invoices and pocketing the difference (see previous blogs).

His next role was at St Johns Park Bowling Club and guess who was there in the role of gaming manager? Surprise, surprise. It was Jodie Eisenhuth, who we know at City Tatts as Jodie Blues.

What are the chances that Colin and Jodie are related? With a surname as uncommon as Eisenhuth, it’s a fairly sure bet. And we can confirm here and now they are related.

So Veloz is rorting at Dooleys and his maintenance manager has a very close relation working at the next club Veloz lands at.

This is where it gets good.

Veloz then moved to Parramatta Leagues Club and guess who was there? Jodie Blues nee Eisenhuth of course.

From there Veloz went to Cronulla Leagues Club for two years and then to City Tatts, where Blues followed.

What does this smell like? If you said a rort you would be on the right track.

Somewhere in the mix Daniel Graham became entangled in the Veloz/Eisenhuth web. These three monkeys have moved side by side to all of these different clubs without any problem. Is this apathy on the part of the management of these clubs, or is it just plain incompetence?

You be the judge. But remember the industry that these three bluffers have cruised through is the same industry that employed Tony Guilfoyle for thirty odd years.

We are starting to think it is harder to get out of the club industry than into it!

By that we mean if the thieving and rorting that has gone on at City Tatts comes to light in the very near future you might have an alibi or at least a plausible defence. You could claim you have not been on the Committee long enough to know about the rorting that has gone on for years.

Now moving along a few months it would be natural to expect you had enough time to suss out what is going on and put a stop to it, especially when you have published blogs to help you.

After all your role as director is to ensure that the club is operated in the interests of members. Not for the benefit of executive management and a select few on the Committee.

You could start by asking why the previously untouchable Tony Guilfoyle was asked to leave the club’s employ. And, even more strange, why the “Marketing Manager”, Kirsty Assad also had to leave the same night! This could be followed by asking why Mark Cooper remains employed even though he aided and abetted Guilfoyle all the way, not to mention that he is unqualified for the role.

To be fair, not being qualified is not the be all and end all as plenty of handymen can change a washer. But you should ask why Mark Cooper didn’t blow the whistle on Guilfoyle.

He didn’t blow the whistle because he was paid to keep quiet. You both know this now.

Here at the City Tatts Information Desk we like to help, so we’re happy to point you in the right direction. Just ask for copies of Guilfoyle’s credit card transactions from when he became CEO through to his sudden demise.

If you find yourself stonewalled, like Jimmy Chen was when he asked the same question a few years ago, just go to the police. At least that way when the police start making arrests you will be in the clear.

You may be shocked by what you find, like we were when we found out. As shocked as those imbeciles that spent the money and covered it up, and thought they had got away with it.

By now you would be forming your own opinion about the relationship between Southern Cross Group and City Tatts, or Marcelo Veloz to be more precise. Before you make up your mind consider this:

Regarding the security guards previously highlighted, the real question is where was the difference in hourly rates going, and how were the hourly rates restored so quickly?

Anyone in business can tell you that successful financial management is critical to success and longevity. Now we know City Tatts don’t see it quite like that, because they continue to pay Humpty Dumpty to do their financials. Remember Humpty Dumpty? His real name is Mark Cooper, the fraud of a financial controller. So this is the question for Humpty: Where did the sudden increase in the guards’ hourly rate come from? Humpty can’t answer of course because he wouldn’t know. About all he does know is what time the cafe opens and when the cake is delivered.

Two people who would know are Veloz and Sam Johnson.

What we would like these two to tell members is where the difference in hourly rates was going. Was Southern Cross Group the sole recipient of this, and if so, why? Or was Veloz getting a cut in the shape of a brown paper bag?

We already know Veloz is partial to a sling in the shape of over-inflated invoicing and given his relationship with Southern Cross Sam you can bet that the difference was going to be carved up.

By now most readers will be aware that Southern Cross Group exist and work closely with City Tatts, especially the City Tatts CEO, Marcelo Veloz. Nothing new here, after all they are a company offering services and Veloz is a CEO looking for better solutions, right?

Wrong!!!

Just consider this and form your own opinion. Southern Cross Group provide security services as part of their “umbrella of services”, whatever that means. Just a few short months ago they managed to get the City Tatts security contract, thanks to Veloz.

Now we hope Veloz can show that he did his due diligence when awarding the contract to his old buddy Sam Johnson from Southern Cross Group, but we will come back to that question later.

What is really interesting is that when Southern Cross went into City Tatts as security provider they offered to keep all of the existing City Tatts guards who had served the club for over ten years. We think that was very noble of them. What we don’t think is so noble is that they tried to have the same loyal guards take a haircut of $4 per hour per shift. Talk about the big print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Of course the guards knocked back the shit sandwich offered to them and left. No problem, Veloz thought. He called Sam Johnson who arranged for replacement guards. Only problem was that the replacements were barely out of training school, you know, the type you see in shopping centres – totally useless.

How funny. But not as funny as Veloz needing to rehire the original guards immediately, before they had time to secure alternate employment. So he called his mate Sam Johnson again who put together a rescue package to entice the original guards back – at their original hourly rate.

All this took place while Sam Johnson and his crew were swanning around the Randwick racecourse looking pretty, having happy snaps taken in the confines of the Randwick sponsors lounge. We thought it best to mention this while the race day is still fresh in everyone’s mind.

It’s not really a surprise that these tactics have been employed to rip off basic security contractors, the same contractors that help make the club safe. Because nothing is safe when Veloz is around, especially where Sam Johnson is concerned.